Note Location appliances are identified as location servers on the Cisco WCS interface and in supporting documentation.

Note For details on compatibility with Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers and Cisco Wireless Control Systems (WCS), refer to the "System Requirements" section before installing this software.

Note Refer to the online version of the Cisco 2700 Series Location Appliance Getting Started Guide for details on the physical installation and initial configuration of the location appliance at: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6386/prod_installation_guides_list.html

Note The 2700 Series Location Appliance does not support 3500 series access points.

Backwards Compatibility of Location Appliance Software

Location appliance software is backwards compatible with the previous two location appliance releases. Therefore, you can only upgrade two releases forward. For example, you can directly upgrade from release 4.0 and 5.1 to 6.0 but you cannot directly upgrade to release 6.0 from releases earlier than 4.0.

Upgrading to this Software Release

For instructions for using either Cisco WCS or for manually downloading this software to location appliances, refer to the "Updating Location Appliance Software" section in the "Installation and Configuration" chapter of the Cisco 2700 Series Installation and Configuration Guide (78-17180-03 and later). You can find this document at this URL:

Backup of Software Cannot be Restored on Earlier Releases

A backup of location appliance software release 6.0 cannot be restored on any location appliance running an earlier software release. Before you upgrade a location appliance to 6.0, Cisco recommends that you create a backup of the earlier release and archive it. This enables you to convert an upgraded system to an earlier release, if necessary.

Location Appliance Image is Compressed

If you download the server image *.gz file using Cisco WCS, the location appliance automatically decompresses (unzips) it, and you can proceed with the installation as before.

If you manually download the compressed *.gz file using FTP, you must decompress the files before running the installer. These files are compressed under the LINUX operating system and must be decompressed using the gunzip utility program. The unzip method you use is defined by the filename you are trying to unzip.

After a software update, the new location appliance software version does not immediately appear in location appliance queries on Cisco WCS. Up to five minutes is required for the new version to appear. Cisco WCS, by default, queries the location appliance every five minutes for status.

Important Notes

This section describes important information about new features and operational notes for software release 6.0.101.0 for location appliances.

Operational Notes

The following operational notes are relevant to this release.

Automatic Installation Script for Initial Setup

An automatic setup wizard is available to step you through the initial setup of the location appliance.

An example of the complete automatic setup script (and manual setup process) is provided in the Cisco 2700 Series Getting Started Guide. You can find this document online at:

When upgrading to release 6.0 from release 5.x (and earlier), you must synchronize after the software upgrade and also when CAD generated floor images are imported into Cisco WCS.

Controller and Associated Location Appliances Must be Mapped to the Same NTP and WCS Server

Communications between the location appliance, Cisco WCS, and the controller are in universal time code (UTC). Configuring NTP on each system provides devices with the UTC time. An NTP server is required to automatically synchronize time between the controller, Cisco WCS and the location appliance.

The location appliance and its associated controllers must be mapped to the same NTP server and the same Cisco WCS server.

Local time zones can be configured on a location appliance to assist network operations center (NOC) personnel in locating events within logs.

Note You can configure NTP server settings during the automatic installation script. Refer to the Cisco 2700 Series Location Appliance Getting Started Guide for details on the automatic installation script. You can find this document online at: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6386/prod_installation_guides_list.html

In networks with a large number of access points (approximately 2000 or more), location appliances might experience a slow down in location calculation and heatmap updates for clients, tags, and access points (CSCsk18810).

Large Burst of Notifications Might Cause Drop of Notifications

A location appliance might fail to send notifications if it receives a large burst of notifications. The dropped notification count appears on the Services > Context Aware Notifications window.

Refer to CSCsu43201 in the Open Caveats section for workaround.

If a release of AeroScout MobileView earlier than 4.1 is in use, incorrect responses are sent to those northbound notifications received from the location appliance. Northbound notifications are then resent by the location appliance, overloading the notification queue and resulting in reports of dropped notifications (CSCsx56618).

Configuration Changes for Greater Location Accuracy

In some RF environments, where location accuracy is around 60 to 70%, or where incorrect client or tag floor location map placements occur, you might need to modify the moment RSSI thresholds in the aes-config.xml file in the opt/locserver/conf/ directory of the location server (CSCsw17583).

The RSSI parameters that might need modification are:

•locp-individual-rssi-change-threshold

•locp-aggregated-rssi-change-threshold

•locp-many-new-rssi-threshold-in-percent

•locp-many-missing-rssi-threshold-in-percent

Floor Change or Minimum Distance Required for Location Transitions to Post to History Log

When history logging is enabled for any or all elements (client stations, asset tags, and rogue clients and rogue access points), a location transition for an element is only posted if it changes floors or the element's new location is at least 30 feet or 10 meters from its original location.

Location History Timestamps Match Browser's Location

The Cisco WCS timestamp is based on the browser's location and not on the location appliance settings. Changing the time zone of the Cisco WCS or on the location appliance does not change the timestamp for the location history.

PDAs with Limited Probe Requests Might Affect Location

Many PDAs do not continuously send out probe requests after initial association to the Cisco Unified Wireless Network (CUWN). Therefore, calculating the location accuracy of such PDAs using RSSI readings might not always be optimal.

If You Need More Information

If you need information about a specific caveat that does not appear in these release notes, you can use the Cisco Bug Toolkit to find caveats of any severity. Click this URL to browse to the Bug Toolkit:

http://www.cisco.com/cgi-bin/Support/Bugtool/launch_bugtool.pl

(If you request a defect that cannot be displayed, the defect number might not exist, the defect might not yet have a customer-visible description, or the defect might be marked Cisco Confidential.)

Related Documentation

The following documents are related to location appliances:

•Cisco 2700 Series Location Appliance Getting Started Guide

•Cisco Location Appliance Configuration Guide, Release 6.0

•Cisco Wireless Control System Configuration Guide, Release 6.0

•Cisco Wireless LAN Controller Configuration Guide, Release 6.0

Note You can see the latest online versions of these documents by selecting the Wireless category and then the appropriate product from the Wireless LAN Controller and Wireless LAN Management > Unified Wireless LAN Management sub-category panels at the following link: http://www.cisco.com/web/psa/products/tsd_products_support_configure.html

Obtaining Documentation, Support, and Security Guidelines

For information on obtaining documentation, obtaining support, providing documentation feedback, security guidelines, and also recommended aliases and general Cisco documents, see the monthly What's New in Cisco Product Documentation, which also lists all new and revised Cisco technical documentation, at:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/general/whatsnew/whatsnew.html

This document is to be used in conjunction with the documents listed in the Related Documents section.

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